Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little Read Free Page A

Orchard Plan. For example, it might take as long as three months for the peach pits to grow into peach trees. But all in all, it was a good idea. Moxy sent Pansy to the garage to get the shovel.
    It was a perfect day. There was a light September breeze, but the sun was anAugust sun, a warm sun. It occurred to Moxy that she should start reading
Stuart Little
just in case her mother did not immediately grasp the magnitude of the Peach Orchard Plan.
    Moxy was ever so slightly annoyed when Pansy started digging underneath the hammock. “Over there,” said Moxy. “There’s plenty of room for a peach orchard over there.” She pointed to a sunny stretch of lawn a few feet from her mother’s prize garden. Its location would please her brother, Mark, because he would no longer have to mow that part.
    Moxy settled back and considered the curious fact that she had preferred cleaning her room to reading a book. It was peculiar because Moxy hated cleaning her room. She hated cleaning her room so much that cleaning her room was number two on her List of Things She Hated to Do.

chapter 21
In Which
Moxie Solves
the Problem of
World Hunger
    Could this be the solution to world hunger? Moxy wondered. Everyone must have something they
had
to do that they hated so much they would do almost anything but that thing. Mark would probably milk cows in Africa for starving children if it meant he didn’t have to mow the lawn. She knew her mother would give up all her worldly possessions, fly to China, and pick rice for poor people if it meant she didn’t have to keep telling Moxy to read
Stuart Little
. The possibilities went on and on.
    Moxy was just turning her attention to the problem of global warming when it occurred to her that someone had better remember to water the new peach orchard. It wasn’t hot out, exactly, but it wasn’t September either.
    “Sam,” Moxy called out. Sam was helping Pansy dig holes. “After you’ve buried all the peach pits, we must, must,
must
remember to water them. Thank you so much.”
    Even now Moxy’s mother was on her way home with the great daisy cake
.
    Around the time she was thinking about Mark and cows, Moxy had begun to feel a little, well, nervous. She didn’t know why exactly. It had something to do with something she had thought about while she was thinking about something else, but she couldn’t think what it was. There was no point in thinking about it, of course. It waslike trying to remember a dream—the harder you thought, the further away it got.
    Even now Moxy’s mother was getting closer to home with the great daisy cake
.
    Suddenly Moxy realized she was in the middle of an in-between! It was the perfect time to read
Stuart Little
! Then she noticed the green hose resting between a pair of dahlias in her mother’s prize garden. Again she called out to Sam.
    “Sam, when you have a spare minute would you mind coming over here?”
    Sam always had a spare minute for Moxy. He jogged right over.
    “See how the hose in Mother’s dahlia garden is too short to reach all the way back to the orchard? What we need is a second hose to connect to the first hose so we can get it out of Mother’s dahlia garden and back to the new peach orchard ASAP—don’t you agree?”

chapter 22
In Which
Impending Doom
Comes in the
Front Door
    On his way to get the second hose so that he could attach it to the first hose so that it would reach beyond Mrs. Maxwell’s prizewinning dahlia garden and all the way to Moxy’s new peach orchard, Sam stopped in the kitchen to eat three peaches.
    “I’ve already had five,” said Pansy. She was standing on the counter eating what must have been her sixth peach.
    Pansy was just about to reach for her seventh peach when her mother walked in.
    Reader, I tremble still when I think of the moment Moxy’s mother walked intothat kitchen at exactly 2:42 on that fateful afternoon of August 23.
    “Hello, Sam,” Moxy’s mother said.
    “Hello, Mrs. Maxwell,”